@phdthesis{DwiLaksmana2023, author = {Dwi Laksmana, Dimas}, title = {Knowledge in the making : embodying transdisciplinary moments on organic agriculture in Yogyakarta, Indonesia}, address = {Passau}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12667}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {154 Seiten}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Organic agriculture in Java, Indonesia, has been historically intertwined with social movements that struggled for more economically, ecologically, culturally, and socially sustainable agriculture. While these grassroots movements emerged under an authoritarian government that showed little interest in organic agriculture, the turn of the 21st century saw the rapid involvement of the Indonesian government in supporting, regulating and, arguably, commodifying organic agriculture. Institutionalization triggered diverse responses from competing organic actors, reflecting their different standpoints and knowledges. In this context, a transdisciplinary approach is deemed suitable to provide context-specific insights into organic agriculture. This dissertation draws on anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) to explore the politics of knowledge of organic agriculture in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as a contribution to a critique of transdisciplinarity. My interest on the hierarchization of different knowledges is inspired by the work of anthropologists of knowledge that asks how the communities they study construct knowledge and how they themselves construct knowledge about these communities. Since transdisciplinary knowledge is co-produced by science and society and reflects their embedded power relations, transdisciplinary research needs to be open to different interpretations, and reflexive towards the unequal distribution of resources, accountability, and responsibility. By linking these two lines of thought, I examine the making of knowledges through reflexive transdisciplinary work. I reflect on how "epistemic living space" (Felt 2009) and "co-presence" (Chua 2015) affect research and shape the politics of knowledge of organic agriculture in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I argue that the hierarchization of different knowledges of organic agriculture was intertwined with my shifting positionalities, as a field researcher in Indonesia and PhD student at Passau University, as I moved between these two different "field sites". This cumulative dissertation is divided into two parts. In Part I, "Knowledge in the making", I present my contributions towards transdisciplinary knowledge production and politics of knowledge of organic agriculture. Part II, "Publications", comprises the three stand-alone papers. The first contribution is my formulation of the notion of knowledge in the making. The second is my exploration of the ways that reflexive transdisciplinary work, and living and intersubjective experience shape knowledge in the making. The third is my demonstration of how an understanding of knowledge in the making sheds lights on the politics of knowledge of organic agriculture. This approach serves to examine the politics involved in synthesizing the conceptualizations of organic agriculture employed by different actors into one overarching narrative, such as sustainable agriculture or alternative agriculture. My final contribution is the notion of transdisciplinary moments, a conceptualization of transdisciplinary research practice that accounts for the politics of knowledge in which both scientific and extra-scientific actors are embedded. As a conclusion, I share the lessons learned from pursuing a PhD as a cumulative dissertation in an unstructured setting within a German-Indonesian research project on Indonesian organic agriculture. Finally, I identify bodies of literature and strands of thinking for future engagement within transdisciplinary research and discuss their potential to contribute to radical change in the institutional and value structures of contemporary academia.}, language = {en} } @article{Fritz2022, author = {Fritz, Manuela}, title = {Wave after wave: determining the temporal lag in Covid-19 infections and deaths using spatial panel data from Germany}, series = {Journal of Spatial Econometrics}, volume = {2022}, journal = {Journal of Spatial Econometrics}, number = {3}, publisher = {Springer Nature}, address = {Berlin}, doi = {10.1007/s43071-022-00027-6}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:101:1-2022112821095396799160}, pages = {30 Seiten}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The Covid-19 pandemic requires a continuous evaluation of whether current policies and measures taken are sufficient to protect vulnerable populations. One quantitative indicator of policy effectiveness and pandemic severity is the case fatality ratio, which relies on the lagged number of infections relative to current deaths. The appropriate length of the time lag to be used, however, is heavily debated. In this article, I contribute to this debate by determining the temporal lag between the number of infections and deaths using daily panel data from Germany's 16 federal states. To account for the dynamic spatial spread of the virus, I rely on different spatial econometric models that allow not only to consider the infections in a given state but also spill over effects through infections in neighboring federal states. My results suggest that a wave of infections within a given state is followed by increasing death rates 12 days later. Yet, if the number of infections in other states rises, the number of death cases within that given state subsequently decreases. The results of this article contribute to the better understanding of the dynamic spatio-temporal spread of the virus in Germany, which is indispensable for the design of effective policy responses.}, language = {en} } @techreport{EjibaOlajide2025, author = {Ejiba, Ikenna V. and Olajide, Adeola O.}, title = {Does translocality influence climate change adaption of rural farming households? : evidence from Arochukwu, southeast Nigeria}, number = {5}, editor = {Ungruhe, Christian and Wehner, Stefanie}, doi = {10.15475/mitrawa.upa5}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15773}, pages = {10 Seiten}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Impacts of climate change are a burden for many rural communities in the global south, and particularly affect vulnerable farming households, that depend on agriculture for their sustenance. Understanding how vulnerable rural migrant households respond to this, from a translocal perspective can help to build households' resilience to climate change. While studies in Nigeria have assessed the impact of migration as a means of adaptation, studies assessing the influence of vulnerable households, using this approach is limited. This study therefore assessed how translocality influence adaptation to climate change, for vulnerable rural households in Arochukwu, southeast Nigeria. To achieve this objective, a multistage purposive random sampling technique was used to collect data from rural farm households. Primary data were collected from the households in the Area of Origin (AoO) and Area of Destination (AoD) using survey and interviews, and analysed using mixed methods analysis. Results indicate that rainfall variability and high temperature are the most risks encountered, resulting in crop losses. As a means of adaptation, migrant and non-migrant households engage in off-season migration to urban and rural areas, with more migrant households engaging in off-season rural-urban and rural-rural migration. Among migrant households, flow of resources occur, with the type of item determining the medium of exchange; while households in the AoO pay less attention to agricultural investment. Migrant and non-migrant households also differ significantly in terms of the number of adaptation measures employed. Findings from the empirical analysis on the influence of translocality on adaptation indicate that, perception of climate change, household size, and the transfer of ideas, knowledge, and innovation by migrants to their households in the AoO significantly influence adaptation of rural farming households. The research makes a case for consideration of translocality in national adaptation plans, aimed at building resilience of rural households in Southeast Nigeria.}, language = {en} } @article{Piwoni2024, author = {Piwoni, Eunike}, title = {Comprehending and sensing racism : how Germans of migrant background make sense of experiences of ethnoracial exclusion}, series = {Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Onine ISSN: 1469-9451)}, volume = {50}, journal = {Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Onine ISSN: 1469-9451)}, number = {12}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/1369183X.2024.2316635}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18508}, pages = {2783 -- 2802}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Over the past decade, there has been a strong focus on studying individuals' responses to stigmatisation, discrimination and racism, while the question of how individuals recognise and make sense of an exclusionary event, has been largely side-lined. To fill in this gap, this study leverages an affect-theoretically informed reformulation of Essed's (1991, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. London: Sage) classic concept of 'comprehension of racism' to investigate how individuals understand and make sense of experiences of ethnoracial exclusion. Empirically, the article analyses 419 experiences/incidents of ethnoracial exclusion reported in 66 semi-structured interviews with highly educated, second and 1.75 generation immigrants representing three 'groups' of Germans who (may) experience exclusion due to their migrant background: Germans of Polish migrant background, Black Germans and Germans of Turkish migrant background. The study identifies three modes by which interviewees talked about exclusionary experiences/incidents: (1) by normalisation (interpreting an experience/incident as 'normal'), (2) by categorisation (identifying an experience/incident as, e.g. 'racist', 'discriminatory', or 'disadvantaging') or (3) by indicating feelings of unease. For each of the three modes, the article outlines the role of affects and emotions in interviewees' narratives, provides insight into the types of experiences/incidents for which the modes were used and highlights differences between the three groups of respondents.}, language = {en} } @article{CreakTrotier2024, author = {Creak, Simon and Trotier, Friederike}, title = {Sport, diplomacy, and regionalism in Southeast Asia : the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games and ASEAN}, series = {Sport in Society : Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics (Online ISSN: 1743-0445)}, journal = {Sport in Society : Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics (Online ISSN: 1743-0445)}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/17430437.2024.2325971}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18520}, pages = {20 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The biennial Southeast Asian or SEA Games, a regional sport mega-event modeled on the Olympic and Asian Games, were established by Thailand in 1959, and since then have been conducted 32 times across 10 of the region's 11 countries. This article examines how this understudied event has operated as a forum for diplomatic representation, negotiation and communication in Southeast Asia. We make three key arguments: (1) the SEA Games have provided member countries with a means to signal national progress and membership of the regional community, as well as to define and delineate this region; (2) the SEA Games have evolved parallel to the region's political grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but with important differences as well as similarities; and (3) the regional perspective of the SEA Games offers insights that blur the distinction in recent scholarship between traditional 'sports diplomacy' (foregrounding the state) and 'international-sport-as-diplomacy' (foregrounding non-state actors).}, language = {en} } @article{Bueno2024, author = {Bueno, Arthur}, title = {The end (and persistence) of subjectivity : Luk{\´a}cs with Adorno, Adorno with Luk{\´a}cs}, series = {Distinktion : Journal of Social Theory (Online ISSN: 2159-9149)}, volume = {25}, journal = {Distinktion : Journal of Social Theory (Online ISSN: 2159-9149)}, number = {3}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/1600910X.2024.2381469}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18548}, pages = {435 -- 454}, year = {2024}, abstract = {This paper revisits Luk{\´a}cs's and Adorno's analyses of reification to articulate a diagnosis that accounts both for its tendencies towards authoritarianism and its emancipatory potentials. Despite their divergences, Luk{\´a}cs's conception of the proletariat as 'identical subject-object of history' and Adorno's diagnosis of 'the end of psychology' in the authoritarian masses seem to converge on a similar outcome. Through opposite paths, they both culminate in the elimination of the subject-object distinction, leading the critique of reification to a political impasse. However, this alternative is rooted in partial interpretations of Luk{\´a}cs's and Adorno's arguments. As I contend, one can reconstruct Luk{\´a}cs's analysis in a way that portrays emancipatory subjectivity not as hostile to otherness but as driven by the material limits of reification, or what Adorno termed the non-identical. Correspondingly, in light of Luk{\´a}cs, Adorno's diagnosis can be read in a way that the end of psychology, far from negating the possibility of emancipation, serves as its driving force.}, language = {en} } @article{SchmidPetriElschner2024, author = {Schmid-Petri, Hannah and Elschner, Sophie G.}, title = {Transitionalists, traditionalists or pioneers? How German municipal energy companies are responding to the national energy transition}, series = {Energy Research \& Social Science (Online ISSN: 2214-6326)}, volume = {2024}, journal = {Energy Research \& Social Science (Online ISSN: 2214-6326)}, number = {109}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {Amsterdam}, doi = {10.1016/j.erss.2024.103431}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18714}, pages = {15 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in Germany aims to transition the country to a sustainable energy system. This has led to a decentralization of the energy market and a shift toward community-focused energy supply systems. Municipal energy companies (MECs), deeply rooted in their communities, are crucial in facilitating this transition and promoting innovative technologies. Websites serve as important communication tools, facilitating interaction between companies and consumers. In our study, we conducted a quantitative content analysis to examine how MECs communicate issues related to the energy transition on their web pages (N = 300). In general, our results show that the energy transition was rarely mentioned on landing pages, and while companies are improving their sustainable electricity products, renewable gas and heating tariffs have received little attention. Additionally, we identified three communication types of MECs: The transitionalists (45 \%), the traditionalists (35 \%), and the pioneers (20 \%), with the latter being the most innovative that emphasizes issues related to the energy transition. Overall, it can be said that the MECs have not yet fully exploited their potential to position themselves as pioneers of the energy transition in their website communications.}, language = {en} } @incollection{UngruheAgergaard2020, author = {Ungruhe, Christian and Agergaard, Sine}, title = {Postcareer precarity : occupational challenges among former West African footballers in Northern Europe}, series = {Sports in Africa : past and present (Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 42; https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/42/)}, booktitle = {Sports in Africa : past and present (Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 42; https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/42/)}, publisher = {Ohio University Press}, address = {Athens}, isbn = {978-0-8214-4696-6}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14897}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {190 -- 203}, year = {2020}, abstract = {When Beno{\^i}t Assou-Ekotto's former coach Harry Redknapp announced that the Cameroonian international had decided to end his professional football career and become an adult movie actor, the story generated astonishment and amusement in social media networks and received widespread attention from the mass media. Although the French-born footballer denied the story's validity shortly afterward, claiming Redknapp was joking, it entertained football fans and the wider public during the spring of 2017. However, while this was one of the very few occasions on which an African footballer's postcareer trajectory was a matter of public debate, it also revealed that former African professional footballers' whereabouts, occupations, and living conditions are widely unknown and remain an underresearched topic.}, language = {en} } @unpublished{Wehner2026, author = {Wehner, Stefanie}, title = {Regional and gendered aspects of migration: Data-exploration from a multi-local field survey in Ghana (Northern, Eastern and Greater Accra Region)}, doi = {10.15475/mitrawa.upa7}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-20299}, pages = {25 Seiten}, year = {2026}, abstract = {This study assesses the perception of migrants and migrant households on drivers and structures of translocal mobility and their consequences for livelihoods in Ghana. A bi-local survey was conducted to collect data on households and migrants in the area of origin (AoO) and individuals in the area of destination (AoD). The survey at the AoO was conducted in two research areas (Gushiegu Municipal District in the Northern Region and Fanteakwa District in the Eastern Region). Thesample then covered 75\% migrant households and 25\% non-migrant households, both randomly selected. The collected data provides information on almost 1,000 migrants and 2,000 non-migrants. Since Greater Accra Region was identified as one major destination, this region was selected as an Area of Destination. In Accra, 50 migrants from Eastern and Northern Region each were randomly selected from the previous survey database. The perception of migrant households and migrants themselves on migration was assessed using descriptive statistics. Over 95\% said migration is essential to secure their livelihood and that migration improves the standard of living of the households. The study elucidates the challenges encountered by rural households in agriculture and the strategies implemented to address these issues. The predominant challenges confronting farmers include the escalating costs of agricultural inputs, the prevalence of pests and diseases, and fluctuations in environmental conditions. Moreover, the research highlights robust translocal networks that extend beyond mere financial remittances, encompassing an intangible web of communication, emotions, and aspirations. By traversing spatial and gender dimensions, the study unveils the extensive diversity of migration aspects, demonstrating that migration exerts markedly different impacts on women compared to men and has varying implications for households in the Northern Region versus the Eastern Region. It is evident that female migrants from Northern Ghana constitute the most vulnerable group, grappling with severe food insecurity. In contrast, translocal networks in the Eastern Region facilitate families in leveraging remittances for diversification of their economic base, thereby enhancing their capacity for future development, while those in the Northern region are essential for addressing the existential needs of families.}, language = {en} }